You know that friend who live-tweets about the Breaking Bad episode you still haven’t seen? The friend you’re considering purging from your life? Well now, thanks to Twivo, you don’t have to. The new software lets you dodge spoilers by temporarily blocking out names of shows and characters your “friends” Tweet about. Brilliant, right? No […] More »

The Conservatives are at it again with another sneak-attack on democracy. This time one of the targets is an old favourite—the CBC. If you search hard enough, tucked away in the 111 pages of unrelated motions, you’ll piece together the government’s plan to tighten control over crown corporations. Via Rail and Canada Post are among […] More »

Labour rights were in the spotlight this week after a clothing factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing 400 employees—a timely tragedy for International Workers’ Day, or May Day, as it’s known. May 1 is an official holiday in 80 countries (Canada not included) and it’s celebrated with varying degrees of unrest just about everywhere else. May […] More »

Remember that day Wikipedia didn’t have all the answers? That day you turned to the world’s trustiest encyclopedia but all it said was, “Imagine a world without free knowledge”? Last year on January 18, thousands of websites protested against the major U.S. internet censorship bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protest IP Act (PIPA). […] More »

Transgender candidates are running for office for the first time in the country’s history. In this country? God no (com’on—Canada just passed legislation allowing trans people to use the public washroom of their choice)—they’re running for office in Pakistan. Turns out the developing country has Canada beat when it comes to certain gender rights. Here—and […] More »

Canadian women made headlines this week for some (gender) inappropriate behaviour. On Monday, three girls pleaded not guilty to pimping out other teenage girls in an Ontario based court. Together, they’re accused of using a Facebook and Twitter party ruse to first lure and then force young women into a sex trafficking ring. The Crown […] More »

On Tuesday, the UN agreed to set some standards on the 70 billion dollar arms trade. Right now, weapons-trading is an unregulated business, where illicit dealing gets lost in the same grey market as government trading. But with the first ever global arms trade treaty (ATT), that’s about to change. Theoretically, the treaty will stop […] More »

Barbara Amiel would have aced my Grade 10 English class. One of our first assignments was to come up with a modest proposal—a satirical essay suggesting a ridiculous way to deal with a real issue, like gay rights, poverty or disease. In a Maclean’s column this week, Amiel proposed how to create an “anything goes […] More »

On Wednesday the UN asked us all to forget our misery; forget our stressful, routine, depressing lives and just cheer up. People all over the world listened and marked the first International Day of Happiness with events such as “laughter yoga” in Hong Kong, positive message posters at the London Liverpool train station, and free […] More »

The National Academy of Science just published a study that shows what your Facebook ‘Likes’ reveal about your behaviours and personal life. The study released March 11 explains: “We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: […] More »

The Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg is asking for marriage photos from same-sex couples couples for the museum’s opening exhibit in 2015. The exhibit pays tribute to the struggle for gay rights, but it is also intended to “normalize” LGBT relationships for people who are perhaps a little homophobic. For the most part, the […] More »